Comment on ESA bafflingly declares private Minecraft servers 'illegal'
taiyang@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Reading this article, ESA feels like the evil archenemies of the Stop Killing Games folks. As SKG put it, the talk of illegality was to mislead a Californian legislator too busy to fact check.
That said, the real fight ESA is pushing is more in regards to private servers for MMOs and other always-online games that SKG wants to be legal as part of preservation. I personally disagree with ESA in that regard, although I can understand their legal argument regarding the lawsuits on World of Warcraft private servers, mentioned in the article.
(Though, my two cents, I personally feel “free market” should mean official servers are better and earn their subscriptions: more people, more reliable, better content, etc… but they usually aren’t. So fuck them, lol).
ripcord@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Wtf would WoW private servers be illegal
taiyang@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If they used official closed source code, there is some legal issues, if challenged, but if they reverse engineered the server code then it’s a lot more leeway (similar to emulators). Most private servers I’m familiar with are the former, though, and since the assets and such are generally client side, nothing the server hosts is illegal.
Though again, I don’t even think that should be illegal but c’est la vie; it’s copyrighted code.
ripcord@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What private server uses Blizzard’s proprietary server cose
taiyang@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh I have no idea, I don’t play that game but I imagine it’s none. Every MMO server I’ve seen was reverse engineered. The lawsuits in those cases are probably frivolous, although you never know how courts go.
Vittelius@feddit.org 1 day ago
Blizzard’s position is that the subscription is for the use of the client as well as their server. A private server allows you to play without an active subscription, thus piracy.